While just about every computer user owns their own printer and is capable of producing high quality documents, the ability to produce such documents in high volume and with special finishing features, such as binding, is still within the purview of the commercial print shops and corporate copy departments. High volume, finished production of documents is typically referred to as production printing. A production printer is a printing device capable of rapid production of large volumes of documents. Typically these printers have high paper handling capacity, the ability to draw on multiple media types from multiple sources and the ability to automatically finish a document such as by adding a binding. Despite the automation provided by the production printer and the proliferation of computer technology, especially in the area of desktop publishing, production printing is still a complicated and often manual process.
In a typical print shop, customers bring in original documents which they want turned into a finished product such as a bound booklet, a tri-fold brochure or a tabbed three ring bound notebook. In addition, they typically need a large volume of the finished product, for example, one thousand brochures. The combination of the original documents plus the instructions for producing the finished product is called a xe2x80x9cjobxe2x80x9d. The documents can be brought in either in hard copy or electronic form, such as on floppy disk, compact disc or tape or can be transmitted to the print shop over a network such as the Internet.
After handing over the documents to the clerk, the customer relays his instructions for preparing the finished product. The clerk will note these instructions on a xe2x80x9cticketxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cjob ticketxe2x80x9d. The job ticket is typically a piece of paper with all of the instructions written on it for producing the finished product. As mentioned above, this is known as job. The job will then be handed to an operator, who runs the production printer, to produce the finished output. The operator""s job is to prepare the document for production, load the appropriate materials, such as paper stock and binding materials, into the production printer and ensure that the finished output is correct.
While the job of the operator seems simple, there are many issues which quickly complicate it. Often, the documents provided by a customer are not ready to be run on the production printer. Some documents provided by a customer are merely raw manuscripts requiring basic formatting, such as margins, typography, etc. Other documents may be formatted but such formatting might not take into account the requested binding. For example, the text of the document is too close to the margin, therefore, when the finished product is bound, some of the text will be obscured. Some documents, such as books, require special care so that, for example, the first page of every chapter appears on the front of a page, also known as imposition. Other forms of imposition include booklet/pamphlet imposition or n-up imposition. Or the customer may bring in multiple documents and ask that these xe2x80x9cchaptersxe2x80x9d be assembled into a book, with a cover and binding.
Other issues which complicate the production printing job are determining and loading the correct media into the production printer. Often, jobs will require many different paper types, such as different stock weights or different colors. In addition, some jobs require the insertion of tab stock at specific points within the document. Still other jobs may require the adding of a bates number or other annotation to the document.
With such a complicated production process to produce finished output, errors are bound to occur, such as loading the wrong paper stock in the printer or setting a margin too close to a binding. Production printers run at very high speeds, often producing output greater than 1 page per second therefore, errors in the finished output may not be caught before a significant amount of time and resources have been wasted.
Accordingly, there is a need for an efficient system and method for managing the production printing workflow.
The present invention is defined by the following claims, and nothing in this section should be taken as a limitation on those claims. By way of introduction, the preferred embodiments described below relate to an interface, implemented in a computer, for representing and controlling a production printing workflow. The interface comprises: a display; a first document object representing a document where the document further comprises content and formatting, the formatting defining at least one page in the document, the first document object being associated with a first visual representation on the display; a document ticket object representing global document attributes, the document ticket object being associated with a second visual representation on the display and capable of being associated with the first document object; a page object representing a page attribute of one of the pages, the page object being associated with a third visual representation on the display and capable of being associated with the first document object; and a first user input device for selectively associating at least two of the first, second and third visual representations. In the interface, association of the first, second and third visual representations results in association of their respective objects.
The preferred embodiments further relate to a method of controlling a production printing workflow. The method comprises: displaying a first visual representation of a document on a display; displaying a second visual representation of global document attributes capable of being associated with the document on the display; selectively associating the first visual representation with the second visual representation; and based on any associations made, linking the global document attributes with the document such that the global document attributes apply to the document.